Nightmare at Amazon; but not with my Photography

The following recently happened to me when I ordered a camera case from a third party seller on Amazon.  I placed the order on Nov 22, 2012 and was notified that it should ship by Nov 26 - 27.  Early in December there was no word about it having shipped, so I emailed seller through Amazon (only way to contact a seller).  No reply.  So after a couple of days, I emailed seller again and said I cancelled the order.  Still no reply.  When I placed the order I paid part with credit card, and part with the credit card's reward points.  The credit card was not charged, but the points were used.

This is the point where Amazon gave me the worst customer service of anyone.  Ever.  They said I could not cancel the order, that the non-responsive seller had to cancel it.  And that I had to wait until Dec 19 to file a claim, and then it would take 1-2 weeks after that to get my rewards points refunded.  Well, that is, unless the seller decided to suddenly send my order (which I had already bought from someone else) - then my claim would be cancelled.

I have never done business with a company whose policy says that if you cancel an order, before it is sent, that the order isn't cancelled until the seller cancels it (even though he doesn't respond to you), and that the seller has three weeks to either send it or cancel it.

Luckily, this was for a small item.  But imagine if it was for a large screen TV for the Superbowl.  You wouldn't be able to order another one because they might send the first one, or not.  Even though you cancelled it, the seller didn't, and he didn't send it or contact you, either.  I hope I have saved someone the problems I had with Amazon.  BTW, I had ordered a big screen TV from Amazon, and several days later got notification that the order was cancelled, so ordered from Adorama for the same price, and had no problems.  Plus Adorama has excellent customer service.  I'll go into that story on my next post.

With my Photography, I have the best possible customer service, as that is at least as important as the quality of the images we would get.  MY policy is this:  if you don't get the images you had hoped for, regardless of quality or anything else, you will first get a free re-shoot if you would like, and second, if you leave with no images because they weren't what you wanted (either after the first or second shoot), you won't pay a penny, and will get a refund off all money already paid.  And no hard feelings.  That is how customer service should be.  If you choose me to photograph you, I want to make sure you take absolutely no risk.